Synaptic Transmissions

I've been a lame blogger

2011-09-18T23:05:00.000-07:00

So I haven't blogged in quite some time. For whatever reason, the world has exploded into so many things happening all at the same time, I've found myself neglecting my blog and not providing entries for anyone to read. Granted, there's like 5 of you or so who read this blog, but my guilt remains. I'll be on the road between SFO and DCA over the next several weeks, but hopefully that travel will give me time to have a breather, write a real blog post, and get back into the swing of things.

Draft Day... Tomorrow

2011-08-19T16:53:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is draft day for our Fantasy Football league. I expect it'll be a lot of fun, as it always is. After 5 years, I lost a lot more money than I've gained, but that's okay. It's about the pride, determination, and the bragging rights. Last year I landed 3rd in league with the bonus for first in points. I hope to do better than that this year! Go Pats.

More Timelapses. Love it.

2011-07-09T23:49:00.000-07:00

The Truth About Social

2011-07-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

For those that know me, I work in social media. I don't normally get into work related items, but since this touches my own personal experience with the new web, I thought I'd write a bit about where we're all going.

For my fellow bloggers, as you may or may not know, we are the dinosaurs of the new web. Blogging is so passé, we might as well be wearing pastel polos and discussing last night's episode of Charles in Charge. What's really sad is that despite the awesomeness of being a velociraptor, we're quite young for the social web. It all began with IRC, BBS, forums and message boards. In fact, the first social network wasn't MySpace or Friendster. It was Geocities with their web rings of cool, tying together people and their profile while cheesy midi files and garish pink backdrops adorned our screens.

But I digress; this is about the future. In the old days, the internet was a magical beast hidden behind Prodigy and AOL or even a simple command prompt (for those early adopters), where only the elite could access it direct. If you weren't on Lynx, chances are you showed up in the Netscape days. But then the rise of the search engines came along and the new interface to the greater web was a quick search away or a few bookmarks for an express lane to destination digital.

Now, if you're paying any attention to Facebook or Google+, the new interface to the web may very well be your social platform. Facebook is now the hub to the web, allowing you to find interesting content, chat with your friends through IM, Video, email or status updates. Rumors of video and music abound, and the next you know, all you have to do is load a web browser, hit Facebook, and find everything and anything you want.

But wait there's more. Around the corner, we begin to see Google+ making their move. Not only will it provide an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, but it will also have all your document creation needs, calendaring, email, and the list goes on. Think we're done yet? Well, not really. Facebook, with their ties to Bing, Skype and rumored music service, will innovate and fight to maintain positioning and in the near future, we're back to 15 years ago with a Microsoft Google showdown.

What does this all mean? It means we're in for a change on the web. One that will challenge your stance on not signing up for a network, while make you really think hard about what privacy means to you and how you can remain as analog as possible. Now I'm not saying go get on Facebook, nor am I saying the anonymous web will no longer exist. But if you want easy access to all the things you used to have to install programs for, maintain libraries and basically do all that work just to share some pics with people, you may have to reconsider.

An exciting weekend

2011-07-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to the UW Arboretum in Seattle. Riddled with walking paths throughout the garden, the arboretum offers a plethora of flora and forest, intermixed with a splash of the local fauna. Whether botanist, biologist or even bookkeeper, you're going to inevitably find a splash of happiness as you traverse the gardens and enjoy the day for what it offers.

After our little excursion into a slice of life, we enjoyed the festivities of the 4th the next day. Sampling the local delicacies of the vendors in tents and trucks, we roamed the adventurous Eastside, underbelly of the greater Seattle Metro, and found ourselves at the fireworks in Bellevue. A few pictures and here and there throughout the day, and what you get is a nice weekend away from the grind.

Gotta Love the Timelapse

2011-06-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

Raise your hand if you love timelapses.

Bouldering schmouldering

2011-06-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday and today, I went bouldering at the local gym, Vertical World, to try out this sport at the request of one of my best friends. To be clear, I haven't climbed since 1998 when I joined a climbing gym back in college. Back then, I didn't follow the routes, I was on the ropes, and was just there to have fun and stay fit.

Bouldering is a whole other game. Not only are there no ropes, but man, those problems are HARD. Sticking only to beginner - V1 routes, I can barely get to the top on many of them. My arms hurt, my legs hurt, my chest hurts, my whole body hurts with the pain of failure, every time I either cheat to stay on the rock, or jump to my demise and look for another try.

On the plus side, it's a blast. Really. The glee of victory when you conquer a problem can't be traded for anything. And when you do a particularly challenging one involving either hanging from a roof or a tricky traversal across a corner, you feel like an Olympian Hero. But, like golf, those moments are few and far between, but well worth the effort to try again.

WTF is going on in the world?

2011-06-03T01:04:00.000-07:00

The world has to be doing something. We have tornado weather all over the US, dead earthworms in Cincinnati, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear disasters, flooding, Sarah Palin running for office, and so many other signs that nature is fed up with our wanton abandon to the balance that was intended for this good earth.

Whether you believe it or not, and yes I'm talking to Esoderica, it's time to consider whether we're entering a time of change... and not the kind advocated by Obama's marketing team.

It's getting to that time.

2011-05-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

And what time is that you ask? Well... time to get a front row seat, or should I say, front row Tweet to the end of the world as we know it. That's right. You heard me. As a follow up to my previous blog on the estimations of St. Peter's judgment speed, I'm sending you a place to Follow the end of the world, one tweet at at time.

Just find @05212011 on Twitter for your news and views to all things apocalyptic and en-rapture yourself with the depth and insight leading us into the next age of humanity. So enjoy, RT to your delight, or just lurk to your heart's content. Either way, this week supposedly marks the beginning of the end as we move towards 2012...ish.

And if you're too lazy to read the TweetStream, here's a quick Wordle summary of its RSS feed:

Game of Thrones

2011-05-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

If you have HBO, and you haven't yet checked out the Game of Thrones series, early signs show a promising new show to watch. Based upon the books of George R R Martin, it's an epic, high fantasy book series made TV show by the visionaries of HBO, cast, crew and original writer.

Set in another world (surprise, surprise) this storyline diverges from what you might consider a more typical story of similar genre. With a distinct downplay of a central magic system, a complex story with a distributed focus across a number of interesting characters, and an ever-changing landscape of plot turns, churns and burns, it's a refreshing change amidst a field of fiction heavily grounded and influenced by the Lord of the Rings. I'm not saying that the typical themes and concepts of the genre should always be repositioned. But, if done right, you might find yourself apart from the pack. I'm almost finished with Book 3, the show is 3 shows in, and I'm going to have to give a recommendation to anyone with an imagination to check either or both out.

Winter is coming.

Imperial IPA! We'll see how it turns out.

2011-04-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been busy with work and just keeping up with life that I've neglected my blog. Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of exciting things happening, between a quick jaunt to DC, and a bunch of work to boot.

On the bright side, my little experiment in homebrewing has finally hit bottling day! It took me a few hours to clean, bottle, cap, clean, clean, clean, but it's all set and ready to go. Two weeks of aging, and I'll be able to post what wondrous (or disastrous) my chemistry experiment went!

Should I theme my blog?

2011-03-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Often times, I have trouble finding something to write about. I'm thinking it's time I wrap this blog around a particular theme to make it a bit easier in finding content out there to wrap around with commentary and useless opinion.

A few of you that I read regularly have themes around books, family, and esoteric topics of choice. I need a theme, and I'm guessing it's going to be around science in the news and mainstream. But, who knows.

Any ideas?

New things are coming!

2011-03-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

Fellow bloggers--

There's some cool changes coming to Blogspot. If you want the details, they're here:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/whats-new-with-blogger.html

Disqus now integrated

2011-03-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

Readers,

I've recently upgraded to using the Disqus widget for commenting, allowing you to use your integrated ID from Facebook, Twitter, and others. Don't worry-- I haven't lost your previous comments, even if you can't see them. I'll try this widget out for a bit and see how it goes, and feel free to tell me what you think!

Syntaxin

Ingenious Minds

2011-03-06T22:36:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've seen Ingenious Minds on the Science Channel, but it's a fascinating show. The human brain is capable of amazing things, but often at the expense of some of the mundane and ordinary capabilities we seem to carry. One of the reasons I got my doctorate in neurobiology was to have a chance to explore the possibilities of what we're capable of. This show represents some of the great things that we can do as people, and it's worth the time to catch a couple episodes to appreciate the depth of the human mind.

Must get a telescope. Space beckons.

2011-02-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

When I was younger, I lived in a small town in Ohio. Before the age of the internet, you had to go out and find things to do, rather than sit on Facebook or Twitter and read the lives of others as your own passes you by. One of the things we did was take the time to look to the stars and planets with a telescope that "Santa Claus" brought me for Christmas as a child.

I'm getting the bug for a glance at the heavens, and I need a telescope. It's fascinating to know that we are but a speck in the universe, and out there, there are billions of planets and stars just waiting to be discovered and explored. Until we can find ways to travel there, we can at least take pictures.

So, I need a telescope that can not only help me peer into the expansive depth of space, but one I can rig my camera to in the hopes that my own astrophotographs may one day make a top 10 chart of pics of space not taken by Hubble. Plus it's cool.

Go science!

2011, 2012, whatever...

2011-01-20T01:09:00.000-08:00

Are you a believer in 2012? How about the Pearly Gates of Heaven where St. Peter sits to judge your entry into heaven? What about BOTH?!?!?

There's a been a link traveling around lately that proclaims that Judgment Day is near... very near. In case you haven't seen the link, feast your eyes on this: http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/may21/

Well, it got me thinking about what it takes for both of these to come true. How hard would it be to end the world by 2012 if we started Judgment on 5/21/2011? So, I did some research and a bit of homework.

Current Population: 6,894,555,475
Growth Rate (per day) k: 1.000030109957
Days until Judgment: 121
Days to the end: 581

Assuming the population continues to grow such that Pt = Pi * k^n, and Peter (being but one person) can only make decisions at a linear rate, rather than some population dependent growth D = R * n, we find that Peter must make a call on 140.28 people per sec in order to drop the population down to 0 by 12/21/2012.

But how do you measure a person? I did a back of the hand estimate and said for every second a person lives, it encompasses about a million variables based on the arbitrary decision that there's about 1000 factors into what led up to that second, and 1000 major downstream outcomes that were propagated into the world because that second existed with the person in there. So, 1000 * 1000 was 10^6 combinations of cause-effect relationships to consider for every second of every life. With the average lifespan sitting at 78.40 years, that means that each person needs to include about 2,472,422,400,000,000 operations.

What does this mean? Well, the top 500 supercomputers, together, can process 32.4 petaFLOPs, so St. Peter is somewhere around the equivalent of 10.70X the processing power of the combined top 500 supercomputers today.

And you know what this means to me? Nothing but curiosity. Well, that and if St. Peter had a cost of operations for those 581 days, at todays energy costs, he's somewhere in the ballpark of $623,872,404.85.

I wonder what his salary is? Oh yah, and this is post 100, which is a much more interesting stat.

The 2010 Year in Review

2011-01-01T16:49:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I'd like to review the predictions of 2010 and see how things fared. Now I'm not much of a Nostradamus, but I do have some kind of psychic abilities, as my predictions turned out fairly well, if I do say so myself.

Last year's predictions:

10. Twitter will actually have a business model.
Done! Twitter is going to make money on data and ads for now.
09. The recession will still be here.
Yup.
08. My parents will actually get a Facebook account.
Done.
07. XBox Live will release a service to order in food using MS Points.
Fail. I can't always be right!
06. Jean cuffing will come back into style, along with the mullet. Both are about due for a comeback, right?
Not really, but the 80's are definitely trying to be revived... I'll give myself partial credit.
05. Esoderica will finally write the novel he's dreamt about writing for years.
Fail. But he's had one stellar year regardless.
04. We'll make contact with aliens. Publicly.
If the arsenic life story from NASA holds up to the re-testing of questionable data, I'll give myself partial credit.
03. We'll find hard evidence for 2012, sealing our fate.
This is already commonly accepted as true, no?
02. The Star Wars Force trainer will unveil a number of actual force-weilding people across the globe.
Fail. They must be forming secret Jedi Academies around the globe.
01. The iPhone will have an app for that.
True! I think....

Tomorrow is Christmas

2010-12-24T22:56:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you all have a great day of family, friends and gifts! And for the record, I definitely re-earned my man card by taking my nephew out to see Tron: Legacy. I'm surprised that you had to know a little bit of the first one to really understand the movie, but he still liked it. I thought it was awesome! So go see it while you're on vacation, and if you're working, go on your first day off/weekend. :)

Charlie St. Cloud, what?!?

2010-12-23T20:49:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend came home the other day and pulled a Netflix movie out of her purse. I asked her, "What movie did we get?" To which she replied, "Charlie St. Cloud." And, like any other dude, my immediate response was to turn on the television, fire up Call of Duty: Black Ops, and essentially get so engrossed in a game, that there just wasn't any time for movie watching.

But, at some point, having a bunch of little 10 yr old brats who have no manners constantly killing you in online matches, got tiring and I gave in to watch this movie. To be completely honest, I've disregarded this flick since the moment the trailers came out. So much so, I had no clue what this was about.

Maybe it was my low expectations, maybe it was the fact that the plot was different than expected, or maybe I was just way too bored to think anything else, but as the movie progressed, my interest grew with the story. I'm not going to recommend you go out of your way to watch this movie, but if you find yourself in a place to watch it, then by all means do so. You might be pleasantly surprised.

The HTC Surround. An unbiased WP7 review

2010-12-19T22:50:00.000-08:00

A number of individuals at my office are, you could say, Apple fanboys to the core. Now I'm not by any means an anti-Apple person, but I'm not as thrilled by their product lines as most are these days. In the world of mobile phones, I've been using Google while I waited for the long overdue Windows Mobile 7 phones. Now, I've finally gotten one-- the HTC Surround.

I'm going to have to say, I'm pretty addicted to this little gadget, but that doesn't come without some cost to it. On first exposure, I signed into all my accounts and it commenced to download all of my contacts. And by all, I mean all. Facebook, Live, Exchange, Gmail, etc. In theory, this sounds great as you can unify all your contacts across a number of media channels. In reality, it was a serious pain in the @$$. It did a relatively good job matching the easy matches, but if you're like me, you have a long tail of stragglers and one-off contacts that you've pretty much ignored... until now. It took me FOREVER to either merge, create or delete these in my list. Once you're finished, there's no way to filter this thing down to what you want. Not a big deal, as search becomes your integrated feature to find people, but honestly, it's a phone. I need a way to at least filter for people with phone numbers in my uber-contact list.

Next up, I went to the Marketplace. As expected, there's only a minimal number in comparison to the worlds of Android and iPhone. But, if you're like me, you don't really use that many. And, all the ones I've come to rely on have already found their way into this new platform. Plus, I got to integrate my Xbox and Zune accounts, giving me access to all my music, podcasts, channels, as well as having the capability to play Xbox casual games while boosting my meaningless achievement points.

Finally, I set up my phone. Unlike the iPhone and Android, there's a lot less flexibility in the overall layout, color scheming and "app-y" feel to the setup. Some may call this limiting. I call this streamlining. At the end of the day, I only use a couple things regularly, and all those things have easy access. Otherwise, I go to the big list o' magic apps and find what I need. The so-called limitations really make you think about which apps and functions you really care about, and some genius decided that this should be described as "get in, get out, and get back to life". And sadly, I agree. It really does make the experience quick and easy.

All in all, I have what I need, I now have a managed and clean contact list, and I look forward to seeing how the marketplace grows as new developers and communities start contributing to this platform. For now, I'm not going back to Google, and I'm certainly not entertaining an iPhone.

Great new movie coming out

2010-11-21T11:09:00.000-08:00

extracted teaser HQ from New Artists Alliance on Vimeo.

This looks like such an amazing movie, that I thought I should share it.

2010 Predictions

2010-11-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

Just a friendly reminder that soon I will have to review my predictions for the year. I'll need to scour the internet for some proof for my 100% accuracy on predicting the future. For those not aware of my predictions, I've pasted them below for reference:

10. Twitter will actually have a business model.
09. The recession will still be here.
08. My parents will actually get a Facebook account.
07. XBox Live will release a service to order in food using MS Points.
06. Jean cuffing will come back into style, along with the mullet. Both are about due for a comeback, right?
05. Esoderica will finally write the novel he's dreamt about writing for years.
04. We'll make contact with aliens. Publicly.
03. We'll find hard evidence for 2012, sealing our fate.
02. The Star Wars Force trainer will unveil a number of actual force-weilding people across the globe.
01. The iPhone will have an app for that.

Go out and Vote

2010-10-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I've been busy and haven't been paying attention to my blog. Well, not this one at least. Work has gotten over-the-top, I've written twice for that blog, did my first interview (and got my first quote) for a great magazine, and have switched up my role in the company. Nothing bad, just busy.

This weekend, I exercised my rights and filled out my ballot as I read through the endless descriptions of what amounts to our bloated political system. And despite that, I'm writing this post to urge you all to go out and vote this week. Give your 2 cents to the system, because the system fails if you don't.

Fantasy Football

2010-10-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Ten reasons to hate Fantasy Football:

Your bench/play decisions always kill you
Injury driven exchanges never strengthen your team
The weekend is stressful instead of fun
You use money that you could use to pay for bills
Side bets make it worse
Stats and analysts are never right
Your team "management" is a meaningless exercise in feeling like you're in control
Trash talk is the equivalent of a grade school playground
It's Fantasy. Fantasy. And yet, it gets to you.
You keep playing every year anyways.

Good to Great

2010-10-10T22:29:00.001-07:00

I recently read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. If you ever find yourself some time, and are fascinated by the culture of business, this is a book that you have to read. I'd rather not get into what the content of the book is about, as I would just do it a disservice. But essentially, it's an in-depth look at a handful of companies that have met a VERY stringent financial and contextual definition to be "good" companies, then hit an inflection point, and went on to be a sustained "great" company.

What this research team found was simple, intuitive, and goes against so much of what you'll find in most corporate cultures that you may change the way you think about your daily life.

Regardless of what you've chosen in life, the findings are fundamentally applicable to everyone. So even if you think it doesn't apply to you, think again.

Starcraft 2 is awesome

2010-09-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

If you're a fan of RTS games, you really need to check out Starcraft 2. And if you're not, well, you should anyways. For those that have been playing, even intermittently, since the days of C&C or prior, a number of games have come out that really expand past the essence of RTS. In AoE3, you had to not only put your time in and choose one of many races, but you needed to manage such a complex macro game, that you lost part of the micro strategy. At least for me, I remember just sending off troops and managing resource collection/unit production for the majority of my time. As for the comment of putting time in, well, the more you played, the more upgrades you could have as a player. This is not ideal in a game where you expect skill to really play a higher role on any given matchup. If I wanted time to be a big factor, I'd play MMOs like Lineage 2.

Well fear not, SC2 is fast paced, it's balanced, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. So if you get a chance, and you've been put off by the ever growing complexities of RTS, then you'll find a refreshing blend of amazing graphics, great micro/macro strategy, and a sweet balance between the available races to play.

Did I mention it's fun?

New Video Posted: Mt St Helens 2010

2010-09-04T23:08:00.000-07:00

What happened to the coffee houses? Go to Caffé Rococo in Kirkland!

2010-09-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

Since moving to the west coast, there has been marked decline the number of local coffee shops. In Boston, you were either a Dunkin' Donuts fan while in a hurry, or a local cafe regular when it was time to enjoy your brew. In Seattle, it seems that Starbuck's has pretty much cornered the market for your regular fix of caffeine. But that doesn't mean that the local coffee shop doesn't exist!

A friend of mine just opened an awesome cafe in downtown Kirkland that I had the pleasure to visit this morning. With it's sleek and modern decor, offset by the inviting staff and relaxed atmosphere, it provides the charm, warmth and ambiance that makes every visit worth your time. And better yet, this place offers lunch that's a little bit different, a lot bit healthy, and good place to sit, have a meeting (or a break) and enjoy the din of downtown Kirkland. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to eat a sandwich/soup due to a work thing, but I'm definitely going to try some on my next visit!

So when you get a chance, head down to Caffé Rococo in Kirkland. It's on the corner of Park Lane and Main St, just a few steps away from Cactus and Zeeks (and a few other businesses).

Veni, Vidi, Vici... For Real

2010-08-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, August 26th, 2010, my three friends and I embarked on a journey. Now, by most climber's measures, this was more of a hill, but for us, it was a challenge to be had. Mt. St. Helens offers a 9-mile, round trip climb rising nearly a mile in elevation, and would be my first true mountain to conquer.

7:30am Stage 1-Hope
The first stage was a simple trail through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We left Climber's Bivouac in grand hopes of reaching the rim of the (for now) sleeping volcano that wreaked havoc in 1980. Ptarmigan Trail #216A would take us through a winding route to the timberline as the sun shone through the trees in its rising arc.

Stage 2- Infinity
From the timberline, we encountered the first of what seemed to be an endless series of boulder scrambles, rising into the air, guided solely by logs marking the general route to the top. As we followed Monitor Ridge, our minds and bodies needed to be sharp, because any misplaced foot or handhold could spell disaster for a few rookie hikers taking on this challenge. During the ascent, an expected cold front swept in, bringing in the low elevation clouds. They menacingly crept towards us, warning us to be ready for the impending weather to come.

Stage 3- Still Infinity

Scramble upon scramble, we suddenly found ourselves with victory in sight. A few more boulder fields, and we were going to met with the most difficult part of the route-- the ash dome. As the scrambles got more treacherous and steep, our bodies and minds fell to fatigue. We knew we needed a few more hours to reach the top, but concern grew as the higher elevation clouds crept in to surround the rim, teasing us by hiding our goal underneath a shroud of despair.

Stage 4-- Despair

As we took the final stage of the mountain, the clouds came in, challenging us with rain, high winds and low visibility. Nothing could be done, but to reach deep into ourselves and find every last bit of energy we had left. For every step on this sand dune top, we slid backwards above the loose ash, and literally inched our way to victory.

Stage 5-- Victory

Victorious, but not finished. We ran the gauntlet in reverse on the way down. With the danger equal, only our renewed energy gave us the will to get down. That, and the glaciers that let us slide down past a good number of boulder fields :) For more pix, check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/syntaxin/ or my facebook page (for those who know me).

Sonic BOOM!

2010-08-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

I did not feel the sonic booms today. I was so disappointed on so many levels. First of all, I wasn't the first to make the joke that Guile was in town. In fact, there's a bunch of references out there, especially on Twitter.

Secondly, I didn't hear it. Is that enough to be disappointed?

And finally, when the news hit Twitter, they did not know what invaded the air space. And I had HIGH hopes it was a UFO, flying in like a platinum-coated Rosetta Stone of truth to prove my predications for 2010. Instead, it was a plane that was thought to originate in Canada. I guess that's a little bit of an alien.

Oh well. SONIC BOOM!!!!!!!

The Northern Lights are a bust

2010-08-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

The northern lights had a slim chance of showing up here in Seattle this week. Talk about a bust. I was looking forward to watching the magic happen from my home. We drove all over town trying to find a nice dark spot to look for it, from Redmond to Issaquah. Alas, it just wasn't meant to be.

It's been a good 10-12 years since I've seen the aurora. The last time was, surprisingly, in Ohio while on break during my early college years. My friends and I were enjoying cold beers, catfishing and a campfire when we realized that the sky was really bright. As the light got more intense, we figured that it was either an alien encounter, or the aurora made its way south.

Since I didn't get the chance to make my own video, here's one to enjoy:

2012? Maybe, maybe not.

2010-08-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

If you're in a place with relatively low city lights, look to the North tonight. A solar flare facing the direction of our planet has gone off, and has been predicted to set off an amazing light show of auroral awesomeness.

It shouldn't be big enough to cause widespread power grid issues or electrical disruptions of any sort, but it does serve as an indicator of the uprise of solar activity expected as it comes out of its low point in the solar 11 year cycle.

Stay tuned as the activity increases so you don't miss out as the auroral displays become more frequent by keeping up at http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

And if you want to watch the tsunami of solar goo travel across the surface of the sun, check out this video:
Video from Spaceweather.com

My Take on Inception

2010-08-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Inception is an amazing movie that leaves you with a lot to think about once the credits begin to roll. It's an imaginative, fast-paced, intricate plot that takes you through a multi-dimensional trip into the minds of the characters. The deeper you go into this movie, the more you'll find yourself wandering in the labyrinthian plot that constantly gives you turns and doors. Fortunately (or unfortunately), you're going to need to find your own way out.

Begin Spoiler Alert! If you have not seen this movie, do not read what I have to say next.

I have only seen the movie once, but I think I need to watch it again to try and validate what I'm thinking. If you search around the internet, there's a lot of explanations out there that fall basically on both sides of the final scene. Either the totem topples or it doesn't (which is expected). I happen to fall into the latter camp.

Taking the movie literally, you inevitably arrive in the former camp, in which the plot provides a "what you see is what you get." And in that literal interpretation, the totem will topple. It's not a bad idea, and it makes for a pretty good interpretation as you walk away. There's a number of explanations out there that say the totem doesn't matter, and the whole thing is just an intricate dream of one man traveling from Sydney to Australia. In these, the totem should also topple. However for me, this kind of explanation is a bit of a cop-out, and says the whole movie is just a cool dream and nothing really happened. I'm not that satisfied with these because I hate to believe I was taken down a meaningless journey that was only meant to make us think about our own dreams and the crazy rules we know exist within the dreams.

From my point of view, I like to believe that the totem doesn't topple. I think this movie is only the beginning of an extraction and inception into the mind of Dom. Heavy with the guilt of circumstances surrounding his late wife, the team and the corporate plot were all part of a carefully constructed and expansive dream by the architect Ariadne to bring him to terms with his guilt. In fact, I don't think we've quite made it back to the true reality in the movie world, and he's still in a shallow layer of his mind by the end of the film.

Ariadne, from the onset, shows a lot of interest into Dom and has an intuitive sense of what's underneath the suppressed memories of his subconscious. She is also a highly talented architect with a skill set that is reminiscent and beyond what Dom has ever done as an architect. To top it all off, there's a implicit trust between Dom and Ariadne that Dom doesn't really show with any of the other characters. Why, you ask? Because I think Ariadne is the "real-life" daughter of Dom. I think she's the architect that is carefully guiding her father through his own psyche so he may find his own way back to sanity.

If you can, for a second, believe that Ariadne is his real daughter, then what does this do to the movie? First of all, the entire movie is a dream sequence from which we never wake. The extraction, starting with the understanding of how Dom's totem works, followed by the underlying reasons for his massive guilt, were carefully architected by Ariadne to lead up to an inception. The inception, which is not quite finished, is the journey of Dom to understand that his wife's death and the subsequent (necessary) abandonment of his children, are not his fault. In fact, he may not even be on the run in the true reality. His abandonment may be a mental one in which Ariadne is helping him understand.

This entire movie is an unfinished telling of the mind of Dom. The plot, the characters, and the events are all a part of an extraction/inception that is led by his daughter to help Dom understand himself.

Work of Art

2010-07-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the new Bravo series "Work of Art." It's probably one of the more fascinating shows I've seen. I consider myself artistic, but I don't think I could ever self-classify myself as an artist. Apparently, artists think in ways that I can't even imagine. Some of the winning pieces have been wholly unexciting and just plain lame. When described by the artist, I can see where they're going, but seeing isn't buying. On the other hand, there have been some really great non-winning pieces that I felt were genius.

I started thinking about what my art installation would be, if I were an artist. And though my idea wasn't exciting, and even I laugh at the absurdity of it, I think I might try it out. So look out for more... but not soon. It might take me a bit.

My Local Blogger Ecosystem

2010-07-24T00:20:00.000-07:00

I noticed that I could build a little mini ecosystem of bloggers in my cyber-local area. We can see where the most activity happens, through a friend of mine who does a wonderful blog on book reviews. Funny enough, it only takes a few degrees of connections to reach the world, so I guess everyone and anyone you see online, is much like Kevin Bacon. Only 6 degrees away from anyone else.

Actually, that's kinda nutty.

Seattle from Above, Food from Below

2010-07-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

A few weekends ago, I went up to the Needle for the first time during the day. Not only is it a sweet view, but I followed up with an amazing dinner that my friend's wife's sister treated us and the extended family to. I'm so thankful to their entire family for not only the wonderful afternoon, but for treating us like one of their own.

I forgot I had this post in draft, so it's a few weeks past date, but I want to share the pictures, put a shout out to my other family, and praise the Crab Pot for yet another amazing dining experience.

And yes, Esoderica, that's a bunch of crab and seafood.

Freedom of Speech

2010-07-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

An email went around work concerning the censorship of social media in China,written in the New York Times. In this day and age, it is really hard to believe that this type of mass censorship still exists in the world. One would think that through the evolution of our species and the technological advances that continue to thrive, we would begin to understand how to coexist with each other while having differing opinions. The US has its own light censorship of the public, whether you choose to recognize it or not. But we have a great deal of freedom regardless, and it's hard to imagine what the world would be like without it. After all, what would I do if I couldn't post meaningless content to my blog?

Veni Vidi Vici... At least I hope

2010-07-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Summer running has been slow to rear its ugly head, between a summer that has finally arrived in the PNW and my own laziness. But, alas, I have started what I hope to be my road to victory.

A few buddies of mine and I have all bought permits to climb to the peak of Mt. St. Helens. The journey will be difficult, arduous, and frought with peril. In my mind, it will be an adventure reminiscent of a cross between Dante's Peak, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Cliffhanger. In reality, families climb this mountain all the time. At 8K ft, with the route starting somewhere around 3-4K, it's a mile rise on a 5mi run. So, I'll be running so I can get that little bit of endurance boost, cursing the teens that pass me along the trail, and taking off-angle pictures to make it look cooler. All in all, I pray the weather holds out on our appointed day, and I hope to come home a conquerer of mountains.

1K views on YouTube

2010-06-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

My first video on YouTube has finally passed the 1K views mark. On the grand scheme of things, it's not exciting, but it's worth a blog post. Overall, there has been 2K+ views across all videos, predominantly US with some global activity, and a healthy variety of age and gender, given the limited scope of the video material.

The one big thing I wonder about is how I could have moved this needle had YouTube been around back in the day... we could have done some damage with our movie parodies, slapstick and just plain stupid awesomeness that filled in the time.

The Most Artistically-Striking Ads

2010-06-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine continues to rave about the Sony Bravia Color campaign, especially the bouncy ball commercial set in San Francisco. I'm a huge fan of creative commercial cinematography, so I thought I would share what I feel are the five of the most stunning ad campaigns that have stuck with me.

#5) at&t More Bars in More Places

I chose this commercial because of the sheer number of embedded elements underlying the campaign slogan, "More Bars in More Places." Every time the commercial aired, you were glued to the television, trying to find more representations of Bars in the cinematography. And although this did well, the Rethink Possible campaign may be ousting it soon from the #5 position.

#4) Microsoft Your Potential Our Passion

This ad was calming and low stress, representing the polar opposite of the everyday experience with the PC. It brought you back to the mindset of your childhood, where everything was possible, and imagination was the key to the future. In a Reading Rainbow style visual, they relayed that feeling and made you want to Realize Your Potential.

#3) Dove Real Beauty

Nothing drove the message home better than the Evolution commercial of Dove's Real Beauty campaign. In the day and age where beauty is a transaction away, and idealistic form is a digital dream, this one brought us back to reality.

#2) DeBeer's A Diamond is Forever

Ahead of its time, this commercial made you want to buy a rock for a woman, or get a rock if you were a woman. A genius use of shadow to let your own imagination fill in yourself to relate to it on an emotional level. This was later modernized by Apple's iPod campaign.

#1) Sony Bravia Colour

This one deserves two videos. Nothing says Color (or should I say Colour) more than these commercials. And they don't even need spoken words to make this work.

Final Fantasy XIII

2010-06-18T01:06:00.000-07:00

Overall, Final Fantasy 13 was an amazing and engaging game, and if you have the chance, I'd recommend playing it. I'm not going to put any spoilers in this post, but I do want to take the time to make a couple points.

Where it rocked:
Like I said, overall, it's a great game. The story line is fascinating, but a bit confusing at first. Though, I'm almost always confused since these games tend to throw you into the story and allow it to unravel as you progress. The fighting mechanics and leveling system are pretty cool, as they are simple enough to keep you from having to put way too much thought into it, while keeping it complex enough to make some choices to the overall mix. And, like all Square Enix games, the characters are engaging, interesting, and for some, annoying enough to make you realize that you're emotionally reacting to them.

Where it missed:
The game progression is way too simple, with very little in the realm of "open-world" and WTF?!?!? NO TOWNS AND TRADITIONAL SIDE-QUESTS?!?!?! RPG is not RPG without these elements. It went way too far towards simplifying, presumably to detract from that completely endless feeling this genre is starting to drift to. I could argue that this is an adventure game on rails with an optional after-game that doesn't really entice the desire to keep on going. In line with the simplification, I didn't have to buy a single thing. There really wasn't a point, unless you play the so-called after-game. Oh well.... it's not like I play an RPG to feel immersed in a world or anything...

Overall, 4/5 stars. The cons don't fully bring this game to a 2 or 3, as the pros really do change the concepts of RPG in some bold ways. But, don't take my word for it. Go play.

Greatest Scene of All Time

2010-06-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

Enough said.

Crazy news in the world

2010-05-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

I read an unbelievable article today on the web. Click on the pic for the original article. Basically, it's about a girl who does not age, whatsoever. And when I mean not, the picture on the left features the girl at 16, with her younger sister at 13. Bonus points if you figure out which is which. The science that I think is crazy here is the drive to find out how to actually control this genetically driven symptom to control the mechanisms behind aging. It's one thing to be driven by understanding how aging works, it's another to think we should artificially control the longevity of the population one person at a time. Imagine the fallout of this, between the increasing scarcity of resources, along with the exacerbation of the scarcity due to the selective prolonging of age with (presumably) the rich, who can further sequester the little of what is available. I'm not even going into the evolutionary implications and the slowing of our ability to adapt as a species in the off chance that 2012 or some other disaster may come along.

On the other hand, evolution-based arguments aside, my first point may be negated by this interesting claim. In this article, the man on the left claims to have not eaten or drank for the last 70 yrs or so. Given that he's 83, it seems a little far-fetched, but the media claims that he was observed for 15d and he did not cheat at any point for those 2 weeks. If this claim is true, and we can harness this sort of thing, well then the controlling aging becomes less of an issue in managing resources.

Science is crazy, facts and crazier, and above all, the internet is craziest.

A Lapse in Time

2010-05-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

On a slow, Sunday afternoon, I decided to go out and shoot some photos. I wanted to try some configurations with the Lensbaby Composer on my Nikon D5000 from a few different perspectives. Most of all, I wanted to not have to work very hard and let the time slip past as I relaxed. So, I ended up with some timelapses. Below is the outcome of that day with some stock audio. I had a particular track in mind, but I couldn't, for whatever reason, recall the name of what I was looking for and gave up out of impatience...

It's that time of year again...

2010-04-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

To get out there and start running. It's finally worth the effort to get up in the morning and not have a miserable run in the rain or cold. I went for my first run of the year this morning at 6am and clocked in a slow 34min 5K just to get the muscles ready for the season. I'm not planning on going for a half marathon this year, but I am planning to hit some goals around my 5K times... if I can stay diligent this year like I did last year. It is sad to note that despite my time off, my knee is still a bit sore from the half last September, but I'm going to chalk it up to me being old and take it as it comes.

In other news, I spent the weekend building up some time lapse photography using my tilt shift lens. I'll need to get a copy of Photoshop, but once I can process the images, be sure to look out for a new video to my YouTube site!

Quarterly Business Review

2010-04-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a quarter of the year, and I thought it would be a perfect time to review my predictions and determine how well 2010 is living up to my guesses.

10. Twitter will actually have a business model.
Still no plan that I've seen.
09. The recession will still be here.
Check.
08. My parents will actually get a Facebook account.
Check.
07. XBox Live will release a service to order in food using MS Points.
Nope, but they did get the new Final Fantasy out, so maybe that's good enough.
06. Jean cuffing will come back into style, along with the mullet. Both are about due for a comeback, right?
Nope, still not here, but with Cyndi Lauper on the Apprentice, all is not lost.
05. Esoderica will finally write the novel he's dreamt about writing for years.
I wonder if his blog is the same as a "Collection of Short Stories"
04. We'll make contact with aliens. Publicly.
Not yet, but I'm feeling good about this one.
03. We'll find hard evidence for 2012, sealing our fate.
Uber magnetic fields, horrible earthquakes, crazy weather, mini big bang experiments... this one is still viable folks!
02. The Star Wars Force trainer will unveil a number of actual force-weilding people across the globe.
Does it count if I have an Android app with a lightsaber on it?
01. The iPhone will have an app for that.
Doh!

Philosaurus!!!!

2010-04-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

This was so cool I just had to write a blurb about it. A lizard was discovered in the Philippines that rivals the Komodo. At about 6ft in length, it's surprising that discovery of this huge animal took so long... at least, Western discovery. Of course the locals have long known of its existence in the forests of the Northern Philippines. Either way, it's just a matter of time until we find one with wings... and call it a real dragon...

Android Phones

2010-04-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

I got a Motorola Backflip this weekend and I thought I'd throw a few tips out there for a new Android user. Seeing as I'm a long-time WM fan, it is a little confusing when trying to adjust to a new OS.

First of all, don't bother with the Motorola or ATT apps. They're useless and often don't work, and when they do, they require subscriptions. Remove all the junk off the home screens and start by downloading apps from the app store. Once you've gotten the apps that you want, build out the widgets and short cuts on your phone screen. The problem with Motorola/ATT middleware is simply that it's middleware. You can't control how it's interacting with your actual online places, that it ends up a black box when issues come up. You're better off finding using the GMail app or the Facebook app that hits your target direct than going through some pass-through junk.

Second, when trying to figure out where to put what widgets (there's 5 different homes that you can page through), I used the pages to group things. One for games and apps, one for media (camera, youtube, pictures etc), one for social and communications like IM, Facebook, Twitter, one for settings and admin, and the default only has what I want quick glances to nearly all the time like my calendar, weather, stocks, and all those things you want a quick check on the phone if you're sitting bored. Otherwise, you're constantly paging, looking for stuff and not remembering where you put it.

Third, it's completely transparent as to how it uses your storage card. I have no clue how it's allocating space, but I know it's using it. It's not as easy as WM to control how you want to use up the disk space on your phone. For now, I'm just going to let the OS and apps do whatever is they do, and maybe someday I'll bother figuring it out. If you're like me, you're not going to come close to filling up 4GB of data on a cell phone, so it's better to not worry than waste hours trying to figure it out (trust me).

Otherwise, the Android phones look promising, and I'll see what I can do with this thing while I await the WM7 phones sometime in the future. If MS doesn't hurry, they'll be pretty much blocked between Google and Apple re-defining the market and consolidating their bases.

Perfect Attendence?

2010-04-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

An article in the Boston Globe this morning warns against the long-running tradition of "Perfect Attendence" award. Now maybe I'm just too serious, but would I really pay news reporter to write an article on perfect attendence and its value in meriting students on this achievement? I think I lost some brain cells just reading the article. I understand the concerns that teachers may have around students feeling compelled to attend school to compete for this reward, but the last time I checked, no one really wants to be there when they're at that age. And if they do, well, more power to them.

I propose we change the system to one that reflects the XBox Achievements. We'll call them myLife Achievements. We should be able to collect these rewards throughout life, and then update our Facebook pages to display the greatness that is ourselves. This is a small list of achievements that I think would be great:

Locomotion: Took a first step
Communicator: Learned to speak, read and write
Edumacated: Showed up at School
Survivor: Made it through adolescence and high school
Online: Successfully logged into a computer
Online and Productive: Stopped fowarding spam mail
Creator: Successfully added content to the internet through social media or personal web pages
No Longer a Tax Burden: Got a job
Worth the Oxygen: Found a girlfriend/boyfriend that lasted more than a week
Gaining Perspective: Saved at least a dollar in the bank
Buyer: Bought something with money earned
Survivor Expert: Learned to toast bread or cook an egg
Cleanliness: Learned to use the toilet
Carbon Conscious: Took a public transportation vehicle
Gaining Perspective Expert: Visited a different country
No Longer Bored: Read a book
Creator Expert: Renamed a constellation for someone you care about
Entertainer: Made someone laugh
Old: Hit 100 years of age
Has a Brain Cell: Thought of something

Ever wonder what the internet looked like?

2010-03-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

The internet is an interesting place, but so is the brain. On the one hand, the brain is highly mapped and detailed in its anatomical exploration. As a grad student in neurobiology, we were looking at how individual proteins were contributing to the activity of single connections within the nervous system. The internet, however, is unbound on so many levels. There is no anatomy, nor location, nor time in which it exists. Not too long ago, geocities.com was taken down, and yet the sites that were there were almost a historical testament to the evolution of the internet. Prior to its removal, I took one last trip down horrible MIDI music, starry sky backgrounds, and glaring pink, Times New Roman font reminiscent of a long, lost culture.

At any rate, I've always wondered what the internet "looked like." One way to see it is to build a graphical representation of its connections, defined as hyperlinks that extend from one location to the next. A great place to look at examples of this can be found at: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

The picture above is my attempt at building a view into the nebulous world of cyberspace. If you were navigate around all the different locations, you'll find all the usual suspects, many of them places that you travel to on a regular basis. I find it fascinating... if you ask if I find it useful, well, that's a whole other story.

I hate the Zune... sometimes

2010-03-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

I've been having a problem with my Zune for the past few weeks and it's been the most frustrating experience ever with this device.

So for a couple weeks, I've been trying to preview content from the Zune software and have been getting a C00D11CD general error from the software. I couldn't figure out why this was happening, and if I connected directly to the marketplace using the HD, I had no problems at all. Now, I'm sure you can imagine just how crappy this is when you're looking for new music to sample before downloading, but let me tell you.... IT'S 10X WORSE!!!!!! I hate the Zune for this. There was not a single helpful article or help file available for what seems like a gigantic problem with a lot of users. After several reboots and re-installs, I just gave up.

Well... I did what anyone else in technology did. I uninstalled the software, hard booted the Zune, and decided to install the software on a different computer. If anything, there's something going on with my laptop with DRM (likely due to a Microsoft bug) so I'll just have to be more careful in the future about mixing my own music with DRM regulated files. Or maybe I'll just get an iPod.

Poker is like golf

2010-02-26T00:26:00.000-08:00

Poker is like golf. You hate the game, but you keep going back thinking, "This time, it'll be better." Yeah, no. It doesn't work like that. I've been playing in a league the last couple of years and it's definitely been a lot of fun. It's given me an appreciation for the game, and the intricacies of table etiquette. However, I'll never be good at it. I do not want to learn how to play because it'll feel like work. Numbers, probabilities, odds....work.

On the other hand, I enjoy the people and politics of the table. Understanding what happened in the hand, why people do what they do, when they make moves and when they don't-- it's almost as if there's a meta game being constantly played on top of the card game.

Tonight, I took 5th out of 13, which isn't too horrible. And all because at the end of the day, it's still chance. Sitting on JJ, all in, up against 98o. Flop X98, turn X, and an 8 for the river. Went in dominating and left the loser with my head hanging in shame. I hate poker.

Percy Jackson?!

2010-02-25T01:29:00.000-08:00

I watched Percy Jackson last weekend, and I have to say... read the books. Not that it's a surprise, but, the books are better. In fact, they're worth every minute of reading. It's not a lot of reading, offering 4-5 hrs a pop, but what drew me to them was that feeling of awe when it came to the old mythologies of ancient Greece/Rome. When asked about what I think of the books, the best way to describe them is to say, "it's a modern day version of Clash of the Titans." For those of us old enough to remember the weekend showings of the stories of Perseus, these books bring a modern twist to what it means to be a demigod.

As a kid, I remember thinking how awesome it would be to be pulled into a world of monsters and gods, fighting to save the world in a reality that offers powers and magic beyond anything that is considered normal. To be able to travel the world, see crazy places, be a part of something bigger than anything you could ever imagine would be priceless. And who am I kidding, I still think that. Well, these books offer a refreshing twist to these childhood dreams, and its worth every second. It's a bit unfortunate that the movie didn't quite fill the shoes, but at least I can look forward to the remake of "Clash of the Titans."

Orofino, Idaho

2010-02-18T00:40:00.000-08:00

I spent the long weekend in Orofino, ID. It's a great town with an amazing landscape. There are rolling hills peppered with forests, not nearly as dense as the wooded areas of Washington, but not as sparse as the Wyoming/Montana scenery. To go with the landscape, there is a lot of wildlife and nature that lives alongside the small population that you just cannot witness anywhere else. At one point, I was fishing with my brother and nephew, when two bald eagles, decided to join the party. The adult stayed a safe distance away, but the brown juvenile decided to hunt some ducks in the river about 30 yards away from us. Being a "young-un," it didn't quite understand the principles of hunting, so the ducks won their little battle that played out before us. They made a little cluster and splashed a bunch of water and somehow kept the eagle at bay from dealing any death blows. Our response was to keep my brother's son as close as possible to prevent him from looking like a tasty alternative! :) Fishing was just as entertaining, and I'm proud to say that I landed my first Steelhead on the Snake River. All in all, a fun weekend.

Amazing(ly Crazy)

2010-02-09T22:11:00.000-08:00

Absolutely amazing. And crazy. I'm ashamed to be from Ohio at this very moment. I'm not going to get on a soapbox or even comment any more than I have already, because I think the video will speak for itself. I'm not sure what's worse though. Being crazy enough to buy this service, or not realizing that you could do nearly all of what this service provides for free... not that I condone either.

The PNW offers a good weekend

2010-02-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

Having lived in the Midwest, upstate NY, Boston, and now Seattle, I have to say there's nothing like the PNW. I spent the weekend down in Portland, with a plan to hit the slopes for some snowboarding on Saturday. At some point, we decided that it didn't sound like a great idea anymore, so we hung out and just went to a few sights around the area. As far as I'm concerned, it was a great idea.

We hiked on Saturday morning for a couple miles, and for the most part, it was great. The downside to it all was the fact that I didn't get a glimpse of Bigfoot, or even a moose. The only thing we caught sight of was a moth. And if it were a nature documentary, we decided that we would narrate that we experienced a rare glimpse of the Northwest Albino Pygmy Bat. After the hike, we checked out Multnomah Falls, along with a few others in the immediate area. The falls were absolutely amazing. Not only can you walk right up to the base of these waterfalls, but you can take the trails to get up to the top to see the water right before it plummets into the thunderous roar below. The falls were so amazing, that I've decided that I'll want to go back the next time I visit Portland so I can bring a tripod, and hopefully there'll be a bit of sunshine for some more dynamic lighting.

Once I got home from Portland, I went to a bar to watch the Super Bowl. An amazing game, to say the least. Exciting start to finish, I'd have to say that NO definitely earned the right to be champions. All respect to the Colts and Manning, but they simply got out-played and flat out beat tonight. And to make it more fun, I won a Bud Light Cooler at the bar, with its very own floatation device. Though I can't imagine needing to have a cooler laze in the water right next to me, I'm sure it'll come in handy.

The Lovely Bones

2010-02-04T00:48:00.000-08:00

I saw "The Lovely Bones" this weekend. It's the movie adaptation of a book by Alice Sebold. Now I'm normally not a reader of anything that falls into the genre of "Chick Lit," but I enjoyed the novel. I didn't actually read the book, though. I listened to the audio book during the final stretch of my road trip during the summer that I moved from Boston to Seattle. The story, in a nutshell, follows the spirit girl who is murdered, as she watches down on her family and her killer from the afterlife. It's depressing and sad, but like every adaptation, not nearly as good as its literary equivalent.

Between my recent obsession with paranormal television pseudo-drama and this movie, it got me thinking about what happens in the afterlife. Somehow, it just doesn't seem like it would be like "The Lovely Bones" or "What Dreams May Come," with their make-it-what-you-will alternate reality, nor do I think it'll be an infinite period of unrest, forever spending time with self amusement by scaring the unwitting living by turning on light bulbs or making footstep sounds in a hallway. Both sound kinda boring to me, since I would tire of the first eventually, since I get bored when there's no challenge. And the second, well, I'm already not amused by flashlights, so forget that.

I think my ideal would be almost Buddhist in nature. That way, I'll always be fighting a reality that's not completely in my control, nor full boredom. It's always challenging, since you want to come back better than before. And, if you need a break, you can accept a fall for a single lifetime knowing that you can make it up later. It's a bit like taking a bench period in the 3rd quarter, since you know you're going back out to give it more later.

As a side note, I encourage everyone to do at least one coast to coast drive in their lifetime. The number of cool locations makes up for distances you have to wait to get to them. You'll never really know what it feels like to see something like the Badlands until you see it with your own eyes, but I digress.

Solve the riddle

2010-01-26T01:09:00.000-08:00

A person is traveling West and picks up a travel companion. Neither has a destination, only a direction. They come upon a 4-way stop with a sign. The sign reads:

To the North, only one will meet that which was left behind.
To the South, only one will meet that which was seen ahead.
To the West, both will meet that which is unknown.
To the East, your car will break down.

What direction did the travelers go?

Prediction #3.1

2010-01-20T21:40:00.000-08:00

I read an MSNBC article today on a ribbon of high-energy particles at the edge of our solar system. Recent hypotheses have suggested that this ribbon is a deflection of particles originating from our sun, interacting with a galactic magnetic field.

What was interesting was the final paragraph of the article..

"The solar system is passing through a region of the Milky Way filled with cosmic rays and interstellar clouds. The magnetic field of our own sun, inflated by the solar wind into a bubble called the heliosphere, substantially protects us from these things. However, the bubble itself is vulnerable to external fields. A strong magnetic field just outside the solar system could press against the heliosphere and interact with it in unknown ways."

I wonder what would happen if said heliosphere interacted with a dramatic change in said external field, maybe around the time that we pass through the plane of the galaxy in 2012? Food for thought...with a whole pile of assumptions as a side dish. But still, food for thought.

Something to do is better than nothing

2010-01-09T21:17:00.000-08:00

I needed something to do today, so I decided to drive out to the falls and take a few pictures. It was a really nice day, if a bit cold, but good nonetheless. It's amazing how green the world is in the middle of winter out here. As I took the path down to the river, moss, evergreens and ferns dominated the woods so much that one could almost forget that it's January.

The path was about a half mile, steep grade trail, but it's well worth the walk if you ask me. At the bottom, you're greeted by the best view of the waterfall, far better than any at the top of the trail by the hotel.

And what's really nice, you can jump the railing and make it right up to the falls and sit on the gravel at the riverside. Not that I'm encouraging anyone to do so, as I believe this river is susceptible to flash flooding and can quickly rise and fall.
It's not Niagara, but it's just as great and it's a fun Saturday activity if you're thinking of something to do. On my way home, I decided to cook myself some dinner, and I went a little overboard with it. I cooked a Ribeye steak, served over sauteed spinach and bok choy with peppers, onions and shallots. I topped the whole thing with some mushrooms and a red wine reduction. All in all, a good day, considering I had nothing to do when I woke up.

Happy New Year! 2010 Predictions

2009-12-31T12:26:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone out there is planning on having a wonderful (and safe) time tonight to ring in the new year! :) For my final blog post of the year, I thought I would throw a few predictions out there around what I think this year has in store for us. It's always fun to think about what the future holds, and it's even more fun to experience it as it unfolds in our lives. So happy new year, enjoy the festivities, and I'll see you in 2010.

10. Twitter will actually have a business model.

09. The recession will still be here.

08. My parents will actually get a Facebook account.

07. XBox Live will release a service to order in food using MS Points.

06. Jean cuffing will come back into style, along with the mullet. Both are about due for a comeback, right?

05. Esoderica will finally write the novel he's dreamt about writing for years.

04. We'll make contact with aliens. Publicly.

03. We'll find hard evidence for 2012, sealing our fate.

02. The Star Wars Force trainer will unveil a number of actual force-weilding people across the globe.

01. The iPhone will have an app for that.

Either way, 2010 will certainly not be as bleak as this former KGB agent predicts:

The Negligent Blogger

2009-12-24T15:52:00.001-08:00

I haven't been the most attentive blogger as of late. In fact, since the half-marathon, I've been pretty much inactive. But that's okay. For all you readers out there, I'm going to make a concerted effort to do better in the New Year. At least, I'll try :)

It's that time of year again for family and friends. Having a bunch of kids in the family, you can't help but feel nostalgic for the days when, as a child, you were still enamored and delightful to the hope and excitement of the season. Not to say I've grown into a Scrooge by any means, but just that it means something different for me-- vacation from work and hanging out with people while I'm not playing the Xbox.

To keep with the spirit of Xmas, I bought myself a gift. A sweet little Lensbaby Composer. I went out this morning and tested this thing in Kerry Park out in Seattle. I don't have photoshop with me to do any final touches, so I threw some saturation and contrast using MS Picture Manager on this test shot. It's a pretty fun lens and I'm ready to try a bunch of things out, once I'm used to the whole manual focus thing again. Digital camera auto-focus makes one weak.

Hello World! Again!

2009-11-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

I've definitely been neglecting my blog for quite some time. I think it's time I got back to informing the world... or rather, 3-4 interested readers, of the circuitous ramblings of a nerd. First, I'd like to give a shout out to one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to-- Star Wars: In Concert! It had all the makings of a great show--pyro, lasers, orchestra, Star Wars... how could you really go wrong? Seriously, all joking aside, it was well done, tied together with a narrative of the entire series, and hosted by none other than C-3PO.

In other news, the weekend coming up is going to be a lot of fun. Fellow blogger, Esoderica, and long time friend, will be visiting my new stomping grounds ("new" being relative to the timescale of life), along with another friend from high school. Although there's no place for campfires and catfishing, I'm sure we'll find a lot to do in the good ole PNW. At least, not without a lot of work, which I don't particularly like doing outside of work. And, I'm also sure, we'll find a 12 pack of PBR to supplement the good conversation.

Ok, it's been too long

2009-09-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

I have no excuses really. Since the half-marathon, I've pretty much been slacking off. The good news is, I started running this week and I'd have to say... one week isn't enough to recover. I'm sluggish and heavy and can barely keep a good pace up. Oh wait... maybe I'm lazy.

The two workouts I did this week were short and slow:

5K: 27:52

4mi: 38:29

But, I've been keeping busy and having fun. I'm now the team photographer for the Cedarcrest Red Wolves Rookies. I've only shot 2 games, and I'd have to say it's been an absolute blast. Not only has it been a great learning experience in setting up and taking shots on the fly, but it's opened me up to what a complete bore the entire post production work is! Between the color tweaking and the leveling of the horizon lines, I almost want to just farm out the whole process. On the other hand, I guess I could just take a good picture at the start :)

Goal! Half marathon complete.

2009-09-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

It's been quite some time since my last post. I've been busy at work, wrapping up a bunch of projects. Plus, I've been in the final push of training for my half marathon. Leading up to the race, I did the following workouts:

4mi: 35:47

6mi: 56:37

4mi: 32:30

4mi: 35:07

Nothing earth-shattering, but I did do my best to push a steady gait for a 9min pace as best I could (minus the 8min pace 4mi run). For the 8min pace, I was more testing what kind of differences I could look out for in case I was going too fast out of the gate. Either way, it paid off.

I finished in under 2 hours, which I totally didn't expect me to do. During my long run workouts, I've always ended up slowing down after the 6mi mark. I guess I just didn't factor the competitive adrenaline that would make me keep going when I otherwise wouldn't by myself.

So, summer goals are done. I'm going to rest for a few days, and then it's back on the 3 day/wk schedule. I'm considering another 1/2 in October, but we'll see how I feel about that!

Great weekend, not so much running, and 50 posts

2009-08-25T08:23:00.001-07:00

Prior to this morning, my last run was on Thursday. I've been having ankle issues that has left me limping after any extended period of taking pressure off the ankle. I'm not sure if the injury is within the ankle joints or on the bottom of my heel, since the pain is one sharp burst then a dull sensation afterwards. So, I decided to rest a bit to make sure I don't end up dropping out of the half marathon on Labor Day.

Instead, I got to hang out with my family and friends at a local wedding in Seattle. As with every wedding I've ever been to, it was a great time. And, it was a needed break from a summer of full court press work. I have an invitation to a wedding out in Ohio for next weekend, but I'm sad to say I'll have to miss out on the opportunity to see a bunch of great people that I haven't seen in years. So this post, my 50th post on Synaptic Transmissions, is dedicated to Brandmanager. I wish you good luck, a lifetime of happiness, and a great day on Saturday. Spill a beer for me and say hi to the family (current and new).

Thurs 3mi: 27:38

Today 3mi: 27:41

3 weeks until Go Time

2009-08-17T09:41:00.001-07:00

Three more weeks, and I'm running a half marathon. I'm starting to get nervous, though I'm not really sure why. I think it's mostly around being worried that I won't finish. Initially, I thought I should target 2hrs or less, but as the summer went on, two things kept me from staying on this goal:

Work kept me busy and I didn't train as much as I would have liked
My knee was killing me for the month of July, and I dropped my mileage significantly

So now, I'll just be happy to finish and I'll be a better person for having gone through it. There something fulfilling about this whole thing-- getting back into running, staying on a regular schedule (as much as possible), and trying to get back into shape. I haven't regularly worked out for over 10 years, and I can't believe how much it has changed my energy levels and outlook on everything that I do. Good stuff.

3 weeks to go, and my recent workouts are:

Thursday 4mi: 35:37

Sunday 10mi: 1:51:08

Today 4mi: 35:02

Love the new Xbox features

2009-08-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

Downloaded the new updates to Xbox Live tonight. I like the new updates to the interface. I also saw the changes to NetFlix and that's great. I hated signing up online for movies prior to watching my video of choice.

I also tested out a game called "Braid." It's an amazing idea, and I love the artwork-- minus the character work. It's just a bit jarring compared to the backdrops and platform art. The puzzles are difficult and I've only solved the second level so far, but at least passed the 3rd. All in all, after being offline for quite some time, it was a fun experience for an evening off of work... finally.

For fun, I bought a Jedi suit and lightsaber for my avatar. Good, old-fashioned, geeky stuff.

Todays workout: 5k, 27:55

Gotcha

2009-08-10T01:26:00.000-07:00

Gotcha. Enough said.

Rats, I've been slacking

2009-08-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Work has been getting the best of me and I've found myself slacking in both running and my blog. Below are my recent workouts--I need to pick the pace back up if I want to survive the half marathon in September. But, seeing as my knee is acting funny, I figure I should slow down a little and pick back up towards the half marathon.

Today was an adventure. Last night, we thought we heard noises in the garage and realized that I probably had a mouse in there. After poking around, we couldn't find anything so we thought it was just the imagination. Later that night, as I went into the garage to check on things, I saw something crawling on top of the grill. I thought, maybe in my excitement, I saw something bigger than what it really was...

So the mission today was to skip my run and get geared up to find the mouse. I went to home depot and bought glue traps and a supersonic deterrent to supplement the poison I placed in the garage last night. I had a buddy help me clean out the garage and the tell-tale clues just started piling up. Footprints were found on the various items in the garage, one of which was my dirty car wheels. Pellets were found to be a little too big for a field mouse. Yup, it was true. We were searching for a rat, not a mouse. However, when it was all said and done, I had a completely empty garage and no live animal to speak of. We found a couple of spots where the little dude may have snuck in. I plugged those up with drywall cement and hoped it was enough to deter them later.

At the end of the day, I know something is/was in my garage, but I just don't get the satisfaction of finding it and killing it.

7/26- 4mi 35min

7/28- 3mi 27min

7/30- 2mi 15:46

8/2 - 5K Race - 23:41

8/6 - 4mi 37min

Oh well. The odds were against me.

2009-07-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

I went to the Nikon serial number lookup tool to see if my D5000 was affected by their recent service advisory. For those that aren't aware, you can find it here:

http://www.nikonusa.com/Service-And-Support/Service-Advisories/D5000-Service-Advisory.page

They had isolated an issue in which the power button was not working appropriately, so if you switch the camera on, it didn't necessarily do so. I, personally, have not yet been affected by this, but apparently, my camera is within the range of the serial numbers with the known flaw. So, I have to send it in. Kudos to them, however for:

Proactively emailing me on the issue
Making it easy to get the work done

Hopefully, they continue the kudos with fast turnaround!

Right before I found out my camera was affected, I took this picture:

It's actually a series of pictures put together to create my first HDR image. I want to get much better at these types of images, but finding the right conditions is difficult!

Thursday's run: 4mi, 35:12

Never when you need it

2009-07-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

I went for a run this morning at 6:30 am, and for an early start, there was a lot of activity going on around my neighborhood. For the most part, it was construction already underway, and the activity of moving signs into place, diverting traffic, and positioning equipment. Either way, there were some really cool shots that could have been taken with the camera, but seeing as I was out for run, well, there was no camera to be had. It seems that the moments you want to have a camera are those where you don't have one. So, I guess I'll just have to truck the thing around like it's a part of my arm and hope I'm quick enough the next time I get an opportunity.

Last night, out of curiousity, I tried a quick-n-dirty Photoshop tilt-shift effect on a picture I had taken last week. Although I overdid some of the effects/didn't pay attention to enough details, it looked cool enough to remind me that I really want to buy a tilt-shift lens (or perspective control lens). Some of the effects one can get out of these are amazing, but the barrier to entry is a whopping 2Gs. Someday....

And by the way, it was a 5K/29min workout.

Turkey days

2009-07-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

I went out running today. I missed a day this week and felt like crap, but I persevered and got my tired old body out there in the summer sun. I woke up a bit late, so it was already nearing noon, but I decided to go for a 10K run (68:12). I finally know what it's like to be a turkey. The afternoon sun was beating down, it was near 90F, and I was baking. I'm used to running in the mornings around 6am, so I completely exhausted myself. The only thing that kept me going was the water bottle I decided to take with me. Otherwise, I might be laying on the side of the road passed out rather than writing this blog. My last run was a 4mi @35:13, so I can't help but feel slow and heavy after looking at my time today.

I've been screwing around more with my camera these days. I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it, but I think I'll need to get some advice from my professional photographer friends to really get the most out it. Here's a little sample of something I took yesterday:

My First Timelapse... since 1994

2009-07-16T00:20:00.000-07:00

I tested out my new camera's interval mode driving home from work the other night. Overall I'm happy with the results. I definitely figured out what things I'll need to change the next time I try this out, namely a different AF mode (or even manual) and a different aperture setting. Outside of that, the Nikon D5000 is an amazing camera. My first test shots can be found at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/syntaxin/

I think I'll start a photoblog

2009-07-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

I just bought a new camera. All summer long, I've been to places and events where I thought, "man it'd be nice to have a nice camera." Well, after plenty of research, advice and budgeting, I've finally purchased one.

I got the Nikon D5000. It was the perfect balance of entry level price and advanced capability potential. I can't wait to try this thing out and start taking pictures, videos and time-lapses. It's going to be so much fun, even if I'm the only one that likes the results :) As soon as I'm up and running, I'll start a photoblog to share some of the pictures/vids.

For a sample of what someone has done with the time-lapse feature:

Morning Run Stats:

Friday: 5K, 29:10

Sunday: 10K, 62:12

Imagine that.

2009-07-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

I read an article over at Digg today about a guy that nicked himself shaving, only to find out that the benign cyst he's been carrying around for 30 years was actually a piece of a windshield that embedded into his chin from a crash.

I can't even imagine running around for 30 years and not have that bump drive me nuts, knowing that there's something just stuck in there. I guess this gives a real life persona to Glass Jaw Joe from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.

Morning run:

4mi 38:10

I need a droid army... of penguins

2009-07-07T18:49:00.001-07:00

I don't need to say alot-- the video is enough to see how awesome this is.

Goal!

2009-07-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

I ran a 5K this morning. I felt pretty good, despite the sore knee and decided to go for my summer goal of running a sub-24 5K. At mile 1, I knew I was in a bit of trouble. I pushed a little too fast out of the gates, clocking in a 6:55 first mile, which means I was going to hit a wall in mile 3 that would really slow me down. Around mile 2, I was sitting at 14:30 or so, so I knew I could still pull it off. Official results: 23:42. Not too shabby, considering that this was gun time. I'm a little curious what it would have been had the race been chip-timed.

Meeting my summer goal, now it's time to switch gears and get ready for the half-marathon in September. It'll be a little odd to switch from a time-centric mentality to a distance one, but we'll see how it all goes. At the end of the day, I'm just glad that I've gotten off the couch and out running again. I have no races scheduled between now and the half, but I'll be looking out for the 10K and 10mi runs to keep me on my training.

Happy 4th everyone!

It's been a while

2009-06-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lapse in Bloggage all you.....2....readers.... out there. I've been busy with work and family that it's been difficult to find the time to just sit down and type. I have another race coming up on the 4th. I'm pretty excited to take it on. After having Friday off, I'm hoping to be well rested and ready to go. This race should complete the Snolqualmie Valley Cup series. Although I'm not in the running to place, it's a lot of fun to go to these three towns outside of Seattle and just get away for a day and enjoy life at a different speed. Duvall, Fall City and likely Carnation, have proven to me that the community of smaller towns still exists out here on the coast.

Recent morning runs:

Wednesday 10K 0:59:47

Friday 5K 0:29:59

Sunday 12.5 mi 2:12:24

Tuesday 5K 0:29:10

Today 2mi 0:15:33

Volcano Blast from Space

2009-06-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Saw this picture on MSNBC today. It's a picture of the erupting Sarychev Peak. What piqued my interest was the nearly circular ring of clouds surrounding the eruption. Until looking at this picture, I realized I always imagined a volcano being explosive, but never associated it with a "blast radius." Clearly, I need to update my mental model. Otherwise, the next time I'm near an explosive volcano, I may try to get to close only to be tossed aside like a tree leaf in the propagating blast.

Morning run:
Easy 4mi, 39:00

Race #2 Done!

2009-06-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

I ran my second race for the season this weekend. Below are the official results. It was a little mixed for me overall for a couple reasons. I didn't feel great going into the run. My legs were sore, I was a little tired, and had an overall feel of lethargy. On the plus side, I ran a nice 7:55 pace and persevered through a little mid-race issue. Not only did both my shoes untie (and remain untied for the race) but the water at the halfway point didn't sit too well and decided not to stay in the stomach. Despite it all, I met the first goal for starting up running again > Get my mile pace under 8min. Next up> run a sub-24 5K. Hopefully I'll get my chance, but I only really have one more race. After that, I'm switching over to 1/2 marathon focus so I may not get the 5Ks in, but rather switch over to the 10K+ races.

overall place:	57 out of 425
division place:	4 out of 20
gender place:	45 out of 190
time:	24:33

Race #2 on Saturday

2009-06-19T00:56:00.000-07:00

I ran an easy 4mi today, just to keep loose for my Saturday race. It should be a good time. There's nothing like small town celebrations in America. Food tents, arts and crafts, local business, and all those things that make small towns what they are. It got me thinking back to the old days of midwest America. Parish picnics, county fairs, random town festivals. If you ever want to experience a world that's disappearing, take the time to drive outside your city and go to one of these. And if you think these places don't exist, here's a video of a small town in Ohio.

Teen hit by meteorite?

2009-06-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

I read an article today on a teen that claims he was struck by a meteorite that "scared the bejeezus out of him." Truth or Fiction? I found the article on MSNBC at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31322855/ns/technology_and_science-space/

This article referenced the original article on the Telegraph at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5511619/14-year-old-hit-by-30000-mph-space-meteorite.html

My conclusion is that it's a load of bollocks. First of all, at 30K mph, the kinetic energy of a pea sized mass would be close to 88.9 kilojoules. That's like me running into you while capping out at a speed of about 125 mph. You think you'd survive with just a scar? Or better yet, have your hand hit by a VW bug going 30mph, only shrink the car down to the impact area of a pea while keeping the original weight of the car. I call BS, but it was a fun to read.

Today's workout:

2mi: 17:17

4mi: 34:50

Northwest Trek

2009-06-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Started the day with a nice 8 mi run. It wasn't too bad, considering that on Thursday, I tried a no-sock Nike Free run. As expected, blisters developed on my feet. Unexpectedly, I had to walk the last mile of the 4 mi run. But that's okay. I used socks on this run, and it helped a lot. Overall, the Nike Free experience is great, and I only wish they made shoes a bit wider since my blisters came up from the insole's edge digging into my arch. My foot hurt much less using those shoes than my normal trainers (barring the blisters). I am going to continue using these shoes over my trainers unless I'm going out for a 10+ run.

After the run this morning, we went out to see the Northwest Trek wildlife preserve. It's a lot like a zoo for animals indigenous to the NW. Overall, it's a pretty up-close and personal experience, with a good variety of animals you don't normally get to see around the Seattle area. The tram was especially cool. Being this early in the summer, we got to see some of the summer babies from the mountain sheep and bison hanging out.

Running workouts

Thursday's 4 mi: 47:25

Today's 8 mi: 77:14

8mi out & back
Find more Runs in Redmond, Washington

Barefoot running anyone?

2009-06-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

So I was directed to an article on barefoot running today. For the interested, you can find it at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html

I found it fascinating, yet full of common sense. When you think about it, humans have been running for much longer than Nike has been around. Evolution, natural selection and all those other biological forces have been shaping us and our bodies to have natural advantages to things we need to do, one of which is running. Whether hunter, prey, player or traveler, running is a part of our very nature. It only makes sense that our feet are engineered to be really good at this activity.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that a good pair of shoes isn't important. Rather, what I'm saying is that a good pair of shoes isn't measured by features or price. The best ones are those that let us do what we're good at.

In this light, I began to think about my hypochondriac reaction to the pain in my foot since I've re-taken running as a part of life. My cynical self decided that because I'm old, I'm starting to develop the beginnings of a stress fracture. Whether true or not, I realized that the reality is that my feet have been coddled for way too long. Maybe I'm on the verge or injury or not, but I think it's time I let my body lead the charge. From that perspective, I've decided to take the first step and start running regularly in my Nike Free 5.0 shoes with no socks.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping evolution wins and my body adapts to become stronger.

Quick stats on my run this morning (using trainers, not Free):

4mi > 39:52

Interesting stats from NPR

2009-06-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

I was listening to NPR this morning on my way into work. They were having a discussion on the "the hookup" era, driven by the sexual revolution along with the equalization of the genders. In a nutshell, they describe this behavior as:

"Young people during one of the most sexually active periods of their lives aren't necessarily looking for a mate. What used to be a mate-seeking ritual has shifted to hookups: sexual encounters with no strings attached."

--NPR

For the most part, partnership and marriage is still a goal in this study, only it's positioned further out in life, as shown in the graph of the average age of marriage trended out from the 60s onward.

It was a fascinating program, and I would check out the online article if you get a chance.

Yesterday's workout:

10K, 67min

The Results are In

2009-06-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

So I ran my first race today and had a hell of a lot of fun. It was the Duvall Days 5K--a local race associated with the Duvall Days town celebration. My only regret is that I didn't stick around to at least sample some food from the booth vendors after the race.

I did much better than I expected, but still have a lot of room to improve. I'm still a minute behind my summer goal. Lucky for me, the summer just started! The final results are:

overall place:	56 out of 350
division place:	5 out of 16
gender place:	48 out of 131
time:	24:53

Top 10 Reasons to buy a Drawdio

2009-06-03T22:22:00.001-07:00

So I finally put my Drawdio together. It was a complete blast, having never soldered a single electronic device together since grad school. It was pretty straight-forward, that even a monkey riding a dog, dressed like a cowboy can put one of these together. Maybe even a "ratscallion" could pull off an assembly without de-soldering. Of course, designing the thing to begin with is likely to be a bit more difficult. Once done, it's even more fun to use it--blood sweat and tears went into its assembly!

Because of how fun this thing is, and for the benefit of Esoderica, I thought I would compile a nice top 10 list for why one should purchase this amazing device:

10) It's 20 dollars

09) Anything encouraging the arts is never a waste of money

08) It's even more justified if you're combining the arts and sciences

07) It provides a nice little 5 minute amusement break anytime during the day

06) It makes a great implement for annoying someone just because you can

05) Building the thing is worth the cost alone

04) You can have YouTube wars on Drawdio symphonies and start a new internet meme

03) You no longer need a walkman while sketching

02) Unlike people, you can turn it off when you don't want to hear it

01) It's from MIT. Anything from there is awesome.

I hope this helps Esoderica as he contemplates this momentous decision.

Last run before my first race

2009-06-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

Last run before my first race since 2006. Prior to that, I'd have to back to the late 90's and figure out when that one was. I did an easy 1/2 mi, 2 mi @ race pace, and 1/2 mi cool down. Wasn't too shabby, sitting at an 8:29 and 8:20 for the 2 miles. The real question is whether I can keep up a third mile or tank against the wall. We'll see, but either way, I'm just glad that I'm back into it.

Looking over the last few weeks, I think the Old Friend will win over the Old Enemy. Back in the day, it was about time and speed. Now, my sense of accomplishment comes from just being able to make it out each morning that I run. Not that I don't inherently get competitive simply because that's who I am. I imagine this first run will be a little of a burn out in the 1st half because I'll get antsy to keep up, and a little of a burn down after I realize I'm going way past my ability. Either way, I win for showing up and finishing.

To comment on other things going on, I finally got my Drawdio in the mail. I think I'll put that thing together over lunch, assuming I don't need to use a soldering iron to attach the resistors, capacitors and whatnots to the circuit board. I'll let you know if it's all it's thought to be. For those of you that missed it, here's a reprise:

Getting ready for the first race

2009-06-01T07:23:00.001-07:00

So my first race is this Saturday. I'm not sure if I have any PR goals, since anything I run at this point is a PR unless I go back to high school times. I know for a fact I'm nowhere near those times. Sometimes, it's nice to remember that my body used to be able to handle that kind of running. It's motivation for me to believe that I could get back to that once again....maybe....possibly....however unlikely.

To set my own expectations, I ran a 5K this morning and clocked in at 28:02. Not too bad, not too great. My translation to it is that I'm going to gun for a mid-27 time and see what happens. Stretch goal would be to see a sub 27, but I'm not sure I can easily pace myself appropriately. I need to get a couple races under my belt before I can re-learn a race cadence.

Outside of the workout, today was a pretty slow day. I saw a video that I can't wait to see hit production:

This thing is freakin amazing and has so many potential uses. Combined with the integration of XBox to Facebook and Twitter, there's a whole new dynamic that's possible with your social networks. Social Networks + XBox + Natal could lead to a paradigm shift in the Live experience...if done right.

Beautiful day, painful run

2009-05-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

Today was an awesome day. Mid 70s, sunny. We ended up going out to the Pike Place Festival. Was entertaining--pretty much the same as any other summer day at the market, with the addition of a few musicians, a beer tent, and some extra vendors. Saw a few lobster tails that I'm going to have to go back and get. Much bigger than the Atlantic variety, it seemed to be a gigantic prawn tail that could feed a family of four.

After the market, I came back to run 6mi. In the hot weather, along with walking all morning, my legs felt like lead and it was all I could do, just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'm sure I'll be hurting by tomorrow, but it's all in the name of glory. This saturday, I have my first 5K race, and my goal is to not only finish under 30 min, but to at least put in a respectable finish against my 8 yr old nephew. In truth, the little dude is going to smoke me, but at least I can try! haha

Quick stats:

32:42 (5K)
70:10 (10K)

Can't wait for Bing

2009-05-28T07:25:00.001-07:00

Had a nice run this morning. A bit on the chilly side, but relaxing. Given that I got to bed late last night, I'm just glad that I still woke up and got out there. Had some more thoughts on how to theme the blog, but haven't gotten to anything good that I'd enjoy writing.

Quick stats:

2mi: 19:37
4mi: 38:47

In other news, the new Microsoft search offering, Bing looks pretty exciting. Can't wait to see it in action!!! Google is going to be hard to beat--ask it a question, get relevant results. Changing that paradigm from portal to destination is something that I've thought about before when it comes to the search experience. However, I'm not sure how much it'll fly with the general populace. How do you use search on the web?

Finally!

2009-05-26T07:39:00.001-07:00

The day started out with my morning run. I took my normal 5K route, and looking at the time by the end of the run, I've found that my time has finally dropped below the 30min mark. I was pretty excited to find this, especially with several traffic lights and some hills that slow down the overall time by couple minutes or so.

1 mi: 09:50

2 mi: 18:41

3.2 mi: 29:35

During the run, I realized that my blog is haphazard and off-the-cuff, so I decided to make it more theme-based. Of course, I couldn't settle on a good theme that I would enjoy writing on a regular basis. A few ideas that came up include:

Everyday Geek: My impressions on Science and Technology in the news
Work related: My impressions on Social Media (not preferred, since if I did this, I might as well create a work blog)
Continue with the random post
Everyday Peanut Gallery: My impressions on Esoderica
Something else?

I'll have to think on this and see what I'll enjoy doing...

My First 10K in over a decade...

2009-05-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Went out for a 10 Km run today, and enjoyed the sun. I've only really been running 3-4 mi runs, so it was a little challenging, especially around pacing myself. I held back a little too much gauging the energy levels I had by the end. But, that's okay. I really doubt I should be out at "race speed" on every single run that I do.

Now, it's time to get ready for Terminator 4. Still haven't seen 3, but I was told to ignore it anyways.

1 mi: 10:13

2 mi: ??:??

3 mi: 29:13

4 mi: 42:14

5 mi: 51:30

6.3 mi: 64:14

Friday's 4 mile run

2009-05-22T07:40:00.001-07:00

I took a 4mi run out this morning. Some quick #s on the run:

19:19
19:20

While out there, I got to thinking about fishing. Not sure how my mind traveled there, except maybe that I've been wanting to take a weekend out in Idaho to try my hand at some salmon. Like most things of interest, you go on the internet and invariably find yourself on YouTube watching videos. Thanks to the nature of the browsing experience, you also invariably find yourself way off topic and out in left field. During my little jaunt through YouTube, I found a bunch of stop motion videos out there. Yes, I know it's old school, but I remember a certain group of friends who used to make videos on the weekends for nothing else but to pass the time in the midwest.

This post is a shout out to those folks. We were ahead of our time.

Music Anywhere

2009-05-21T09:39:00.001-07:00

Came across the next biggest thing coming out of the Media Lab (imho)...the Drawdio. Being an MIT alum, I realized I totally should have gone into engineering. What was I thinking messing with Drosophila? I'm not going to speak to the merits of awesomeness this thing provides. I'll let you see it yourself:

http://sliceofmit.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/turn-grandpa-into-a-musical-instrument/

Fire in the Furnace

2009-05-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

When I say fire, I mean fire. When I say furnace, I mean Bellevue. Was working a bit late today, and went outside to walk around and take a break. Above, I hear the "thump thump thump" of helicopters. To the north, the chaos of sirens. And in the background, the din of activity as cars and vehicles manage a disturbance.

There was a slight hint of smoke in the air, like a camp fire that went out hours before in the middle of the night. Quickly, that hint became a blatant column of soot rising into the atmosphere. I didn't know if it was Blackhawk down, the coming of a new Pre-Cambrian explosion with the collision of a comet, or someone's cigarette gone out of control. Either way, it was a little jarring when you're out looking to clear your mind from work to find blazing fires and burning buildings a few blocks away.

Hopefully, all is okay and no one is hurt. But I have to say, that's the first time I've been that close to a commercial grade building burning down. The nearest thing to it is watching Esoderica ask a girl out or Clint trying to dance.

Quick stats of the AM run:

2mi: 18:34
4mi: 19.53

New Computational Awesome--Wolfram Alpha

2009-05-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

A new "search engine" that I had found has earned the top spot on my current geek list. Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine that does what no other engine does. Rather than report back what it finds, it creates and summarizes (essentially creating new content) answer the query you send it.

It's not a way to find web pages with answers, its a place to find answers. So, if what you're looking for is answers more than pages, it's an amazing alternative.

For example, if you put in the query "New Jersey," you get a whole bunch of facts about New Jersey. If you enter two stocks, you get comparative graphs on those stocks.

Want to know what x^2*tan(x) is equal to? Check it out:

http://www86.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x^2*tan(x)

You'll find graphs, alternative forms, derivatives...and other representations of the concept. The real question is whether it can predict the date of esoderica's first child. I asked it, but it couldn't compute the answer.

Oh really?

2009-05-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

I came across an article on CNN about the migratory patterns of basking sharks. Pretty fascinating, except for the part where it was a surprise.

Seriously, when was the last time an extra large sea creature has ever been found to hibernate?!?! Large sea creatures seemingly follow the same pattern-- they migrate throughout the year! In order to keep up with global cycles and change, along with keeping their bodies well-nutritioned, they migrate. Unlike us, the ocean is a giant playground for them to wander. Between ocean currents and seasonal variation, animals can travel globally much easier than for me to get to Boston. I, at least, need new tickets, a form of ID, some money, and all those other things. As a sea-faring animal, all I gotta do is do what I've been doing--swim.

Quick stats on my morning run:
1mi: 10:10
2mi: 09:30
3.1mi: 11:36